


Three Wolves Moon

by thegirlnamedcove



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Derek Hale Deserves Nice Things, F/M, Good Alpha Derek Hale, M/M, Pack Bonding, Pack Dynamics, Pack Family, Pack Feels, Season/Series 02, The Hale Pack - Freeform, basically i love these nerds, canon adjacent?, here is my love letter to these nerds, sort of canon compliant, yeah canon adjacent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 19:26:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14027127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegirlnamedcove/pseuds/thegirlnamedcove
Summary: A freshly turned alpha will feel an urge to acquire betas that is almost overwhelming. Betas anchor the alpha, just as the alpha anchors his betas, and the relationship between them in unique among creatures.





	Three Wolves Moon

 

**Isaac**

 

There would always be a part of him that wondered just how much of his dad’s legacy he was carrying. The anger and the ruthlessness and the impatience were all there right under the skin, more present sometimes than his shift, and he wondered if they really belonged to him.

The freezer was still a regular feature in his dreams, and the boiling feeling of rage was always there locked inside it with him. It scared the shit out of him.

More than that, though, it scared the shit out of him how attractive Derek Hale’s offer had sounded. Inhuman power, ultimate authority, a greatness he couldn’t imagine or even perceive. A family to look after him. No more fruitless goals like good grades or winning swim meets, no more feeling weak and afraid. Just him and his pack, against the world.

He accepted the bite that same day, sitting in Derek’s car in the cemetery parking lot. When the teeth pierced his skin he moaned, deep and hungry, and watched as the finger shaped bruises along his forearm brightened and then faded away to nothing. His father’s mark and his father’s claim, gone. The pain and the wetness of blood stoked the fire he hadn’t noticed in his groin, and Derek, hovering over his stomach, so close to his dick he could nuzzle into it if he wanted, looked up and him at smirked at the smell. And holy hell, he could smell it, earthy and salty under the obnoxious lavender of his laundry detergent.

He’d remember it later with a cold tendril of shame, but he’d sink claws into his thigh while playing with himself all the same. That too was a hanger-on, a possible inheritance from his dad. Because what normal person liked pain during sex, unless they’d been beaten so often and so early that their wires were permanently crossed?

In the moment, Derek just pulled away and slumped back against the driver’s seat, Alpha urge satisfied in the presence of his new Beta, full of the high of claiming and owning. Isaac mirrored the movement, pressing his cheek to the cool car window, feeling good in submitting himself to a domineering force. He needed someone, and someone needed him, he felt it in his bones.

He was still riding that high a few days later when he sat with Stiles and described in detail his crush on Lydia and his plans to harm her.

There were no such plans, at least not in the pack. Erica had joined them, and that quiet kid Boyd was soon to follow. They met at the local Denny’s for pack meetings, where Derek ordered for them in a show of authority and caring, and usually got it right. When he didn’t, Isaac ate it anyway, on some level expecting a backhand should he complain, and when he was done he went home to his father and made his excuses. He had to play at allegiance, for now, but he knew it wasn’t real. He knew he had something more now. And that feeling was more amazing than anything he’d felt before.

He told Stiles and later Scott all about Lydia anyway, hoping to incite a reaction. The truth was they had no leads as to what she was or who was committing these killings and Derek had begrudgingly admitted that these two chucklefucks were usually at the center of catastrophe in Beacon Hills. If anyone knew, they did.

So he detailed his pining, hoping to raise Stiles’ hackles, and he detailed his plans to pull her entrails from her gut, to raise Scott’s. He learned very little from the encounter except for this: Scott was a fountain of anger and spite and spirit, and Isaac wanted to drink from it, heavy and deep.

 

**Erica**

 

“It’s like I’m a computer.”

Michael snorted.

“Shut up, idiot,” Erica laughed, eyes on her hands as she picked open the sandwich wrapper, “It’s like I’m a computer. But I’ve got this virus fucking me up and every once in while the computer will freeze up and send all the wrong messages all the wrong ways, and then I’ll reboot to fix the problem.” She hummed. “Only the problem isn’t actually fixed afterwards. The medication can hold it at bay for a while but the virus is still there. I could still freeze up at any point in time. There’s never…..I can never really relax, not a hundred percent.”

Michael slid a hand across the lunch table and closed it around her fingers, stilling her movements. Neither of them were particularly big talkers, most of the time, and from the outside they might not even appear to be friends. Surely friends would chatter and laugh and scream like everyone else in the school. But they’d perfected the art of a peaceable silence, and she appreciated the times exactly like this, no pressure to speak, no pressure to be articulate. Just small offerings of her thoughts, and his thoughts, and occasional comforts. She wished it could be like this forever, and underneath the warm comfort was a familiar acidic feeling of resentment for whatever boy he eventually ended up with.

“It’s like….I can feel this girl inside of me and she’s who I’m  _ supposed _ to be. If I was working right, if that virus wasn’t there, I’d be amazing. I  _ am _ amazing. I just can’t make it come together in the real world. Every other girl can strut around like they’re Queen Shit, but I can barely stuff myself into sweatpants and sneakers the day after a seizure and they’re happening more lately.”

“Probably makes it hard to strut.” He ran a thumb along her hand and she laughed.

“I’m great at strutting. I’m like a peacock.”

He let go, after a moment, and went back to his own food, carefully not meeting her eye. A smile played over his features.

“The girl peacocks are ugly.”

“The Erica peacocks aren’t,” she tossed the wrapper, finally liberated, at his head, “Dick.”

  
  


**Boyd**

 

Some days it felt like he didn’t exist. He woke up after his parents had both gone to work, and made breakfast for himself. He got on the bus, where the driver didn’t meet his eye, and sat in the back where no one looked at him. He attended class, and sometimes they forgot to call his name during attendance. He ate lunch, and no one sat at the table with him, almost as if they didn’t know there was a table there to sit at. He moved through the world like a ghost, knocking at walls and moving things around just to test if he was still able to leave some mark on the world. Any mark.

At work, after school, he picked up the keys in the main office of the ice rink. No one was ever there to watch him do it. He could probably steal from the register if he wanted. The zamboni he’d been shown how to work was loud, and drowned out any chatter coming from the stands as skaters changed into their shoes and left. He had no time to chat with anyone, potentially make friends. No time to listen to their gossip from far away. He had two hours to clean the ice, one to clean the lobby, and then he needed to be home to do schoolwork or he’d fall behind in classes.

At home, dinner was waiting in a tupperware container in the fridge, some casserole ready to be nuked, and some nights he just tipped the whole thing into the trash. Hunger was real, was tangible. If he felt hungry, he must exist.

When Derek approached him, he assumed it was an accident.

He wasn’t dressed for the rink, but when he walked to the front desk at the ice rink it was with purpose. Boyd opened the cash register without thought, assuming he was here to get change for the meter outside.

Instead he smiled sharply, his canines just a bit too long to be natural, and spoke low and quiet.

“Hello, Vernon. Let’s take a walk.”

Boyd followed dumbly, and forgot to lock the office altogether.

“When’s the last time you spoke to another human being, Vernon?”

“Boyd,” his voice felt wrong against his ears, “It...it’s Boyd.”

Derek pulled up short and leaned against the lockers by the door.

“Got it. Boyd. So answer the question, Boyd. When?”

He thought about it, really thought about it, and couldn’t come up with an answer. Monday, maybe? When Stilinski had paid him for keys to the rink and tried to weasel out of half the money. But it was Saturday now, and that conversation had only lasted two minutes. Before that? He couldn’t recall.

“Exactly,” Derek said, and when Boyd looked up from where he’d been studying the floor he was staring intently, “Humans have such a loose idea of family, of loyalty. Sometimes they manage to do it right, but a lot of the time? Someone slips through the cracks, gets forgotten. No one deserves that.”

His mind whirred, turning each word over until it snagged.

“Humans? What are you, an alien?”

Derek smirked, and his teeth were definitely too big for his head now. Boyd buried his fists in the pockets of his coat, keeping any thoughts inside his own head.

“If you’re willing to listen, I think I can offer you a place in my pack. You have the perfect temperament, and I think you could use a bit of loyalty in your life.”

He cast a glance towards the ice and, seeing no one, jerked his head towards the supply room where they could be alone.

Two hours later, when he was catching up on his neglected duties and the rest of the pack was convening by the back entrance, he felt whole. Present. The aching wound in his side and the new pack bonds thrumming in his chest told him, with a certainty he wasn’t used to, that he was alive.

 

**Isaac**

 

Derek was still on the run from the local hunting family, which meant he was living in a train compartment underground for the time being. He’d set up a bed in one of the cars--a mattress and sheets that seemed expensive and did not match their surroundings--and piled books up around it like he was a child building a fort. When Isaac came to visit, more often now that his dad was dead, he would flop out on the baby blue duvet and run his fingers against the wall, in tiny spirals and spikes, as he watched Derek read.

”Do wolves have mates?” he asked one day, the quiet of the last hour finally becoming too much.

Derek raised an eyebrow at him that more than communicated the answer.

“It’s just that, we learned about real wolves a little bit ago in biology, and they mate for life. I figure with all the supernatural stuff in the world, maybe soulmates are real too.”

His alpha put the book down--a Harlequin novel now that Isaac could see the cover--and turned to face him.

“It’s...rare. And plenty of weres don’t believe it exists at all, that it’s just a fairy tale,” he paused and studied the wall, his expression knitting together into something of a mask, albeit a fragile one, “My parents always said they were mates, though. That they knew from the moment they were introduced.”

“How do you know? Like, for sure?”

Derek snorted, and the mask was gone, replaced with the haughty mirth that usually occupied his face when they were together. He reminded Isaac so much of Camden sometimes.

“In high school? I really doubt anyone you meet in high school is going to be your mate. But when you do meet them, at college or work or whatever, it’ll feel like fire. That’s what my mom always said, that it was like someone had set her on fire and she was frantic to be near dad and practically vibrating out of her skin.”

He pulled his book back open, and broke eye contact before speaking again.

“Why? Got your eye on someone?”

“No, not...just, sometimes when I talk to Scott it’s like...like he and I are a matching set with all the same broken parts inside us,” he stared at his feet, determined to get it out, “I feel like my wolf wants to grab him and hide him in a tower, and I’ve never felt that way about guys before.”

“Are you sure?” Derek huffed a laugh, “Or were you just not supposed to say how you felt about guys?”

Isaac nodded, but didn’t meet Derek’s eye. Something else he’d have to examine later, when he was by himself in bed.

“Well, I’ve always felt he should be in our pack, but he’s still angry about Peter and I...get it, I guess. This omega thing isn’t healthy, though, and he’s a great wolf. Like he was born for it. If you two are actually soulmates, maybe that’s why. Although,” his expression went stormy, and he flicked the romance book in his hands towards the stack by the wall, “he’s still sniffing around that Argent girl. The Argents have a long of history of getting wolves to work against their own self interest.”

 

**Erica**

 

Being a wolf was amazing. For the first time her muscles felt alive, and capable. If someone told her she’d been encased in lead most of her life and only just released, she’d believe them just for how light she was now.

She spent most of each school day walking. In art class she stood beside the high desk instead of taking the stool. At lunch she stalked down the halls, did laps around the common area, ate out of her hands like she was going somewhere. In english she flitted around, helping and taunting the others in accordance with how they’d always treated her, before.

God, she thought, sometimes, how amazing it was to think of that sickness with words like ‘before’.

All of it she did in heels, even when they were uncomfortable, just to revel in the fact that she could handle a little discomfort now. She didn’t have to worry about elastic waistbands being too oppressive when she was already running low on spoons, about how much energy it would take her to do laundry and how overworked her parents were if she asked them to do it for her. About which shirt would be easiest for an EMT to cut off in case of an emergency.

It was just clothes, but in the same token it was  _ clothes _ . She could show the world the girl that had always been there. The inner self that had been too cumbersome to express before, the biting angry wit she’d always carried. She’d wanted Stiles, once, because he’d carried that same wit and she’d thought in a broad sense that he could express it for her. That he could be her voicebox.

She was her own goddamn voicebox now.

Her parents didn’t understand, didn’t get the transformation. Short of telling them about werewolves she didn’t know how to ever make them understand. To them, she would always be their fragile little girl. They’d responded to news of the seizure disorder with an abundance of caution, pulling her out of school for six months while she adjusted to new medication and they all developed new routines and safety procedures. When she’d returned it was with reluctance, their hands on her shoulders feeling like claws, and it was only by the skin of her teeth that she’d been allowed to stay.

She’d hidden a few seizures, when they occured late at night and she was alone. The grand mal she couldn’t, but some of the petit mal? The ones that manifested as a brief paralysis and loss of motor control? Those she could hide, and she did, because any weakness to her parents was reason to lock her in a tower.

She realized, now, with the wolf beneath her skin, that doing that and pushing back against their urge to infantalize her was its own sort of power. She realized that her power now wasn’t new, but had grown out of that. She realized that, in many ways, she didn’t need them anymore, even though they still needed her safe and secure and alone in her room.

On the afternoons when she visited Derek’s sad train compartment she would sometimes look around, scope out the dirty seats. Imagine herself laying out a sleeping bag on the floor and stacking up her brand new makeup along the windows. The image wasn’t as unappealing as it would have been a year ago. It wouldn’t be fair to Derek, though, to put him under that kind of scrutiny. Housing a runaway. Still. She imagined it.

She experimented, too, with a sense of sex appeal. It was all too common, for those dealing with the disabled, to imagine that they were all asexual. Dan is autistic, so of course he can’t understand real feelings. Jocelyn is wheelchair bound, so nothing works downstairs and what’s the point. Erica had seizures, so of course no one would ever consent to marry her and she’d never have children. It was a toxic sort of background radiation which she’d gotten used to over the years, and she’d planned on living with it all her life.

Now, though. Now she could walk in a room and everyone, except for Lydia Martin, would fall silent. Now she could command attention. Now everyone around her stared at her legs, which had always been amazing but were only recently on other people’s radar, and even as a part of her said that she was more than just her looks, she delighted in the fact that her looks were now on the table in other people’s eyes.

She’d always been a person. But the wolf, in all its base instinct and ability to heal, made other people recognize it even when they didn’t want to, and that was fucking amazing.

 

**Boyd**

 

The others didn’t pay him a lot of mind at first. The consequence of being quiet, he supposed. Isaac was a sharp shard of glass in person form, angry and explosive and ready to fight anyone. He was also soft, in private, and Boyd wasn’t yet able to reconcile the two. He tramped around at Derek’s training sessions like he was just waiting to rip someone’s throat out and in response Derek just ruffled his hair. Gave him a smile. Shoved him back to the end of the line to wait his turn for another go.

It made sense, when you considered real wolves, but it also made no sense at all.

Erica was another beast. She wanted to be vicious, so badly it hurt him to watch, and she tried. God knows she tried. Still, there was a nervousness under her skin that showed in every action she took, every parry forward into Derek’s space carrying hesitation. Once, she leaped onto his torso and wrapped her legs around his hips, kissing him deeply like she considered it a weapon, and Derek threw her off. Wiped his mouth. Sternly ignored the tenting in his exercise shorts.

He told them it was never an acceptable expression of their wild natures, to force yourself on someone like that.

Boyd knew, though, that that wasn’t exactly it. She hadn’t wanted Derek, or at least not primarily. She was terrified, just like he was terrified. Of what this power meant, of how they would control it, of what would happen if it someday slipped away. She was grasping at any situation that didn’t require her claws, anything she could use if one day she couldn’t rely on them anymore. He got that, understood what it was like to be terrified of succeeding and terrified of failing.

After all, he was terrified too.

So one day, after training, he approached her with his fists deep in his jacket pockets, face placid as it always was but heart racing out of control.

She smirked at him from her place leaning against the wall and stared at the place in his chest where that heart lay.

“Got something to tell me, tall dark and handsome?” she said. Her knuckles still bore tiny flesh wounds which would heal before they were done talking. Her white t-shirt bore red streaks that would be harder to get rid of.

“Yeah,” he said, and then cleared his throat to get rid of the cobwebs surely forming in there, “You wanna go do something? Watch a movie maybe? As packmates?”

She tapped a finger--long nails, painted navy blue with silver speckles like stars--against her bottom lip and smirked at him.

“No, I don’t think so,” she smiled, “not as packmates. But...I could be up for a date. If that’s on the table.”

His heart froze in his chest and his muscles froze along with it. He felt powerless in the face of this woman who’d taken her situation and her terror and just run with it. He wanted to be with her, learn from her, and consume her. He nodded, brusquely, and breathed deep before answering.

“It is,” he said, “On the table.”

“Good.”

Her hand laced into his before he’d even finished having a crisis and then she was tugging him out the door, her heart racing too.

 

**Isaac**

 

He had to say, he saw what Scott saw in Allison. There was a quiet ruthlessness to her. Not strength, exactly, and not fortitude. She didn’t pretend to be unaffected by the neverending stream of bullshit that made up each human life. It was more that she responded to that bullshit with a lack of hesitation.

Whatever it took to fight back, she’d do it. No questions, no moral bargaining, it was just done.

Scott wasn’t like that. It felt like every conversation they had was weighted with all the expectations Scott carried around about how to be a good person and a good boyfriend and how to push back against the wolf inside of him. He was practically a monk in comparison to Isaac. But he figured that maybe that’s why Scott followed after Allison. Why he might be perfect for Isaac. For all that they’d suffered similar wounds--he’d heard Stiles commenting on Scott’s violent drunk father more than once in middle school--he was still too soft. He needed someone to defend him, and to ground him, and to remind him of how much life actually hurts.

She did that. Isaac could do that too, if she’d ever get out of the way.

For now, he could practice. It would be easy, he figured, especially as Derek locked eyes with Jackson--his eyes were glazed in a way that either meant the supernatural or rohypnol, and Isaac wasn’t in a place to be picky right now with monsters on the loose--and nudged him and Erica forward.

“Go get his attention. Try and lure him back to the bathrooms for a hookup or something.”

Erica raised an eyebrow at him, a smile playing over her lips.

“Which one of us?”

Derek snorted, “Both. I don’t have any idea which way this kid swings and if we only send one of you and guess wrong, that’s time wasted. Just...be alluring.”

Isaac stepped away from their semi-private alcove, along the far wall, and into the fray. Hands caught on his shirt immediately, as he passed drunk patrons and sketchy staff, but he kept his forward momentum, and Erica’s hand stayed in his so they wouldn’t separate.

He caught a glimpse of Jackson through the crowd and pushed through any available space to get to him before he wandered off. It would be fine. He could use this to practice.

Erica got with the program much faster. That was the thing with straight people, he thought to himself. They understood themselves to be sexual objects much sooner. Or they saw examples of sex and attraction that matched their own orientation, anyway. She’d likely grown up with all kinds of images--magazines, television, even ads on busses--showing her what it looked like to be a woman and sexy. It was gross at times, sure, how often a naked picture was used to sell auto insurance or something, but in the same hand...he was jealous. She curved her spine in a way that pushed her breasts forward and ass out, and Jackson’s head turned into the movement, and Isaac didn’t know how to do that. Didn’t know how to adapt that to his own body, especially in a way catered to a man’s eyes. His best example was the covers of the novels Derek read (even now, that made him huff a laugh) with the muscled men on the covers posing in front of old farmhouses.

He went with it, no matter how stupid he felt, and threw his shoulders back like he was a maiden in finishing school trying to balance books on her head.

Jackson’s eyes tracked from Erica to him, still glazed but clearly attentive, and he preened under the attention.

 

**Erica**

 

Being a werewolf, it seemed, was mostly about meditating. Control was everything, anchors were everything, and until she could nail down those two things she would sit on her balled up jacket on the floor of a train station, listening to the woosh of water in nearby industrial pipes, while Derek told her how to breath.

As if she didn’t fucking know how.

Her parents thought she was at the doctor today. She wondered how long it would be before they started to notice that the bills for those visits had stopped coming.

“Erica, your heart,” Derek said, before returning to his breath narration. She swore and repositioned herself, let her lungs fill with stale air and settled, chasing after that calm feeling she could only remember having as a human.

Beside her, Boyd sat motionless, the muscles in his face and shoulders slack, and she thought if she reached out right now and pushed him he’d probably just go over like a mannequin.

In front of them, Isaac fidgetted, his hand making an abortive move towards his pocket,  _ again _ , as if he thought maybe he could sneak his phone out this time.

He’d given Scott his humber, and he and Derek held out hope that Scott would come around with enough time and persistence, but Erica had her doubts. Isaac was far too smitten for all that cold recruitment shit. She could see it in the softening of his face and easy smiles whenever Scott texted, and the determination with which he replied, lip caught between his teeth as he typed.

“Sit, Isaac.”

He whined, low in his throat, but relented, folding his hands in his lap.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Derek smiled, “Or I’ll make you sit.”

“You couldn’t if you wanted to,  _ alpha _ .”

“You little shit.”

And then they were off, Derek rolling around on the floor with Isaac like puppies. Or, rather, like a grown dog playing with a puppy, constantly pulling his punches and letting the puppy he thinks he’s an equal participant. Erica pulled the jacket out from under her ass, and Boyd did the same with the cushion he’d snagged off Derek’s bed. They both splayed their legs out in front of them, trying to erase the tension in their knees from squeezing into the backseat of a Camaro, and Erica hooked her ankle over Boyd’s.

“So how’ve you been doing?” she asked.

Boyd startled, visibly, and turned wide dark eyes on her.

“What?”

“You know, in your life,” she rolled her eyes, “What are you up to? How was class? What did you eat for breakfast? Anything.”

“I--” he cut himself off, “I didn’t expect that to be your question.”

She nodded, “Interesting factoid. Now answer.”

“Um.”

His eyes cast around the room, seemingly desperate for an answer. Finding none--or at least none that served useful as a distraction--he answered truthfully.

“Not much going on,” he said, “My folks are out of town on vacation, and all my friends are you guys right here.”

She pressed a hand to her chest, and scoffed like she was hurt.

“Friends? I would think us making out behind the IHOP merited more than just friends.”

Boyd blushed dark, ducked his head. A smile played over his lips, and Erica took it as an invitation to slump over and prop her head on his shoulder.

“It does,” he said, “What do you want to be called?”

“Hmmm,” she ran a hand along the denim of her jeans, let her nails stritch against the rough fabric, “Mrs Boyd, ruler of the universe. You can be Mr Reyes.”

“Little fast, don’t you think?” His voice was soft, but close where his breath brushed against her temple. Erica let her gaze wander around the room, skipping over Derek and Isaac, over the train, and the dirty mattresses inside it.

“Nah, I’ve got a good feeling about you.”

 

**Boyd**

 

Sometimes Derek sat with him at work now. The first time, he made out like he was hiding, like he had to move his location often in order to avoid the Argents, but then he offered Boyd a ride at the end of the shift and they went out to a diner in the middle of town, so he figured it was a lie. And he didn’t bother justifying his presence again.

Boyd slumped back in the seat of the zamboni, so familiar with the routine that he could drive on autopilot by now, and Derek sat in the stands with his feet propped up against the plastic glass that circled the ice rink.

It was loud, but not so loud that they couldn’t talk, even at this distance.

“Full moon, tomorrow,” Derek said, raising his voice to a register he normally avoided. Probably figured it would ruin his badass image to shout. “I was thinking we’d all head out into the preserve, camp out. None of you have really experienced what it’s like to be a wolf in nature.”

“What, this isn’t nature?” he chuckled, “I’m practically Balto.”

The way Derek tipped his head more than communicated the glare that was likely on his face. Boyd cranked the wheel and did a u turn to make his next pass.

“By all means, go to the frozen north if you want. But I bet you’d rather be hunting with us.”

“Hunting?”

He heard a hum, like Derek was thinking.

“You remember what I said, when you asked how we were going to handle the kanima? A month ago?”

“Yeah,” Boyd shrugged, “You said we were predators, but that doesn’t mean we have to be killers. That we should try to save it, if we could, since it was probably scared. Since  _ he  _ was probably scared,” he corrected.

“Right. Well, the first half is true too. You’re a predator. I’m a predator. There’s nothing wrong with it, and you should know that part of yourself. It’s...freeing. To indulge that instinct. Hard to explain to humans, but...rabbits are fun to chase. Fun to catch. They taste better, fresh.”

Boyd snorted, although a furrow had started to form in his brow.

“So we’re gonna commune with nature, then?”

He pulled the zamboni through one last tight turn and then set it to idle at the open doors that led to the hallway and back storage area. Derek was close enough now that Boyd could see the toothy grin painted across his face.

“You’re gonna commune with your pack,” he said, “You in or out?”

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this for more than a year. Making changes to this part or that part, making sure they were in character and interacting right, working through the feelings I have for Berica. A fair amount of it is my own headcanons. (Nothing in canon supports a gay Isaac, if he's anything he's bisexual, but I don't care.) This fic is my baby.
> 
> Posting it is me holding my baby over my head like Simba.
> 
> That said, if you see a mistake or inconsistency, please tell me about it. If possible, say it in the meanest way you can.


End file.
